Does Your Company Have ADHD?

It can be very important for a business to be reactive to changes in requirements, business opportunities, maintenance situations, etc. The ability to react is an aspect of a healthy, dynamic, adaptive company.

A startup may have one angel customer that is sufficiently lucrative to only require reacting to their needs. This is a fantastic situation. You don't have to guess what this customer wants. Reacting is easy. You don't have to have vision or make touch choices.

However, it can be habit forming. The flip side of the coin is the ability to stay focused. When you have more customers, when you are trying to anticipate markets, when you have to start prioritizing because of resource limitations it is essential to be able to stay focused.

Being reactive and being focused are competing forces.

When it is necessary to stay focused and people are having difficulty staying focused an organization can exhibit a collective personality and that personality can have disorders just like a person can. An organization that is having a hard time focusing looks a lot like a person with ADHD. And it can be as big a problem for the organization as it can be for an individual.

When the company needs to be reactive it's not a disorder. It's entirely appropriate. However, when focus is what is needed it can be a real problem. This post deals with the scenario when a company needs to focus.

There are several tell-tales that your company may be suffering from ADHD. Does an e-mail from a customer send people off immediately investigating some new opportunity or problem? Does a new bug send people off immediately seeking a solution? Do meetings get off topic. If they go off topic do they come back on topic? Do you have recurring discussions on specific topics? Are people working on what you think they are? Do you spend a lot of you meeting time talking about things that you don't end up doing?

People at all levels can be easily distracted. I've seen executives leave a meeting where important priorities were being set leave the meeting and go directly to an engineer and ask him to do something explicitly contrary to the priorities that were just agreed to. This kind of ADHD behavior is communicable. The higher up it manifests, the more communicable it will be.

When focus is required it is very important for management to set an example. It can be very hard for entrepreneurs to focus. The same damn the torpedoes drive that allowed them to step boldly into the unknown and found a company often leads to a reactive business approach. If the message is mixed it will likely be very difficult to keep people focused. People will learn that recognition comes from being involved in whatever new thing is happening and not from sticking to a plan.

It is important to think about new things as they come in the door. The need to focus doesn't permit a company to stick it's head in the sand. Companies still need to be reactive. The key is to compartmentalize the assessment (triage) of new information and the assignment/resourcing (action) of it.

The same distinction can be applied to a new project that may involve an entire department of the company and to the smallest maintenance issue in the field that might only take 5 minutes to fix.

The issue is being in control of when and how to react.

The assessment of a new project will involve substantial effort and will normally be formalized - a business case, a profit margin analysis, etc. The assessment of a new bug might only take 5 minutes. They are both important. You will have many bugs and even small ones can be distracting if you don't stay on top of them.

You want to make it clear that you are triaging everything that comes in the door and who is responsible for it. When it is clear other people equally clearly aren't expected to or desired to be involved.

Some triaged issues will be actioned. You want actioning a task to be equally clear and visible so that it is clear what is expected and who is expected to do it.

Triage and actioning can be brief and simple but it is essential that you do both. Together they concisely and unambiguously specify what is expected (and not expected) from people.

Staying focused requires good record keeping. Issues, features, opportunities, etc. will recur. If you don't keep track of the triage decisions you will end up having a lot of Deja Vu. It's a good idea to keep track of the reasons for and against an issue and any additional information like work breakdowns, estimates so that if the issue comes up again you can quickly review what you decided last time and why. If there is no new information then you don't need to do anything more than just review the decision. Just ask if there is new information and if the answer is no, you don't need to engage. If there is new information then record the new information and retriage the issue. You don't have to discuss it on the spot. Don't let people hijack your focus with wishful thinking, whining, etc.

For bugs I highly recommend a bug tracking system. There are many good open source options. You don't need to spend a lot of money. For features you can also use a bug tracking system. A bug tracking system inherently supports triage and assignment and they make it easy to record the reasons and any extra information about the decision. No one works on a bug/feature until it is triaged and assigned to them.

For strategic and tactical business opportunities most small companies can record an overview in a spreadsheet and backing information on a file server. Set up an incoming opportunity folder on the server, keep the overview spreadsheet in the main folder and create a subfolder for each opportunity. Create a project folder and only create a subfolder for a new project when an opportunity is assessed and there is a management signoff to spin up the project. During triage there may be specific actions to do high level R&D estimation, cost of goods estimation, market assessment, etc.

Many good ideas come up in meetings but they can be distracting. You want to spend your meeting time talking about what you ARE working on or are already COMMITTED to working on. If you find that you are spending a lot of time on tangents, consider setting up a brainstorming session on a regular interval (biweekly or monthly) so that you can ask people to use that venue to bring up new ideas that would otherwise distract your operational project meetings.

Focus is so often the key to successfully capturing market opportunities. There are lots of real challenges. Don't let ADHD create more challenges for you. Be a company that can focus. Advocate clear and concise triage and assignment and practice what you preach.